


Calamus

by dewinter



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: A Complete Lack of Self-Awareness, Flashbacks, M/M, Repression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28924746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dewinter/pseuds/dewinter
Summary: Five times the Captain didn't understand, and one time he did.
Comments: 72
Kudos: 88





	1. 1921

**Author's Note:**

> Title and epigraph from Whitman, who the Captain probably read and was like "wow I love poetry about men being really good friends, outstanding, jolly good."

_I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other's_  
_necks,_  
_By the love of comrades_

_*_

“Well, how was it?”

He looks up from his book, not without irritation. She’s peeking her head around the door, and she’s in the mood for needling him, he can tell.

“It was – well, it was rather good, actually,” he says, closing the book and laying it carefully by his bed.

Edwina sidles all the way into the room, beaming.

“Oh, I _knew_ it would be! Come on, budge up, tell me all about it,” she says, shooing him across the bed and folding herself onto it with a distinct lack of grace.

“Well – I shouldn’t ruin the story of course, in case you and Estelle want to go and see it, but I must admit it’s not hard to see what the fuss is about. He really _is_ tremendous. He has this – this _presence_ on the screen. It’s quite – breathtaking.”

Edwina looks at him for a moment, and he spends it trying to tug the coverlet flat without her noticing.

“Oh, don’t be obtuse,” she scolds, nudging him in the side. “I didn’t mean _Rudolph Valentino,_ for Pete’s sake. I meant _Mabel._ ”

“Oh,” he says stupidly. “Well. I – well, she’s – I think she had a nice time,” he trails off lamely, picking his book up again.

“Well, will you see her again?” Edwina asks, with a bite of impatience.

“Hm?” He looks up from the book, distracted.

“Brother, I sometimes wonder if you were dropped on the head as an infant. It’s not a difficult question. Are you planning to take Mabel Northam out to the pictures again?”

He frowns. “I shouldn’t think so.”

“Well, why ever not?”

He considers telling her that he only took Mabel out because she and Estelle ganged up on him _again,_ and he’s learned with over twenty years of practise that it’s easier to go along with their schemes than to attempt resistance, and that besides, over the course of the evening Mabel had not only revealed her dislike of aniseed balls, but had proclaimed Valentino to be _highly overrated –_ and that these were not even the most compelling reasons he had very little interest in courting her in earnest. He decides against it, however, and merely shrugs, raising the book a little as though a shield.

“I simply – it simply won’t work,” he says quietly. She fixes him with another of her looks, and for a moment he fears she’s going to start up again. Then something soft comes across her face, and she leans briefly against his shoulder.

“That’s alright,” she says, and the weight of her is steadying, somehow. “She’s a bit of a bore, really. All those dreary watercolours. And forever talking about Norfolk, as though any of us had the slightest interest. Now, come on, cheer up and look lively, we’ve only a quarter hour before dinner.”

As quickly as she came she springs from the bed, jostling him. The door snicks closed behind her, and he straightens the coverlet again, and folds his hands on the cover of his book and thinks about the bow of Valentino’s mouth and about how if he catches the 1137 into town tomorrow, he’ll just catch the matinee.


	2. 1913

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Implied underage sexual activity (not involving the Captain) in this chapter.

The teacup rattles dangerously in its saucer; it’s an awkward manoeuvre, balancing the tray on his right arm while he grapples with the doorknob. Somehow he manages it – he’s been practising – and he nudges the door to Blythe’s set open with his hip.

“Sorry I’m late, Blythe,” he says anxiously, though he knows it’s no more than three minutes past the hour. His voice cracks, as it often does, and he can feel himself going red. “Cook was –”

He stops. Blythe is sprawled on the window seat with his legs spread and his neck taut and pulled back. Another student is kneeling before him, his hair caught in Blythe’s fist. It’s nearly dusk, the sun casting out a last wild halo.

The tray overbalances, dashing the teapot and the sugar bowl to smithereens on the parquet. The silver tray spins into stillness with an almighty clatter. Blythe’s eyes snap open, and the student kneeling before him wheels round. It’s Carruthers, the Kilbracken house captain, and he leaps to his feet, furious.

“I’m – Blythe, I’m so sorry, I’ll – I’ll clean – I didn’t mean to –”

“Stop stammering and stand still,” Carruthers says coldly. He runs the back of his hand over his mouth; he’s breathing heavily, and the colour’s livid and high in his cheeks. “ _Christ,_ Blythe,” he hisses over his shoulder. “You said – thought we weren’t to be disturbed –”

Blythe looks faintly pink, too, but he doesn’t stand up, instead busying himself with what looks like an old blazer in his lap. “Slipped my mind, old boy. Ought to have thought – good grief, stop scuffing it in with your toes – here, use this.” He leans across the window seat to grab a tea towel and throws it across the room.

“Now listen here, you little weasel,” Carruthers snarls, still panting. “You tell anyone a _word,_ and you’ll be sorry you were ever born, do you hear me?”

“Oh, do leave him alone, Kit,” Blythe says, and it takes a minute to register that _Kit_ must be Carruthers’ Christian name. “There’s little enough harm done, is there?” Blythe glances across the room to where he’s still blotting uselessly at the carpet.

“There’s plenty harm done, if this little wretch starts spreading – starts telling – look at him, the shifty little bugger –”

Carruthers has a cruel, impatient streak, that’s well enough known – Driscoll took a grim pride in showing the whole dorm the switch marks across the backs of his thighs, after he got boot black on Carruthers’ morning suit. It’s enough to make a boy’s legs twitch in anticipation of punishment, when he’s in a mood this foul.

“He won’t – you won’t say anything, will you, lad?” Blythe says, and it’s confusing, almost alarming, because there’s a note of soft desperation in his voice. They seem to be circling around some great, chasmic secret, the three of them, and it’s not at all clear what that might be. 

“I’m so-sorry,” the boy stammers, still dabbing, the tea towel by now soaked with cold tea. “I’ll get it clean, I promise – just – ju-just tell me when you’re – I’ll do it tomorrow, after prep, I promise –”

Blythe laughs, a little breathlessly. “See,” he barks, clapping Carruthers on the shoulder. “Nothing to tell, just a full teapot of Darjeeling all over the rug. I hardly think he’s going to the Headmaster to confess his own clottishness.”

Carruthers says nothing, but continues glaring across the set with his brow furrowed and his black hair shadowing his face. A majestic fury radiates from him. It’s hard to look away.

“Come on, stop that,” Blythe says, and he’s his usual amiable self again, all rolled up sleeves and lopsided dimples. It’s hard to believe he and Carruthers are friends. “No harm done, really. The bedder’ll sort it out. We’ll say no more about it, shall we?”

The boy nods; scarpers. Out in the hall, he slumps against the wall, his heart racing. Just a matter of months until it’s over, and his evenings will be his own again, and Carruthers will be up at Oxford, probably, and Blythe will be sitting on other window seats throwing his head back against sunsets without clumsy, squeaky boys from the second form blundering in and disturbing him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It would be really convenient if the writers would, like, give him a gd name already, to prevent the pronoun chaos of this chapter.


	3. 1936

He feels out of place, and distinctly uncomfortable. Monty has invited the usual ragtag assortment of radicals and bohemians, of course, and the air is muggy with the smoke of a dozen French cigarettes being smoked at once through conversations about jazz.

It’s cooler on the balcony; the night air is a blessed, clear relief.

“Too warm for you, too?” says a voice in the darkness.

“Rather,” the Captain replies, and the man steps into the puddle of light cast by the open doors. He’s slim and dark, and he’s clutching one of Monty’s ghastly crème de menthe concoctions.

“That’s quite the get-up you’ve got on,” the man remarks, and the Captain looks down at himself as though expecting to find himself wearing furs.

“Oh – well – not really – I mean, it’s regulation, so –”

“Oh, I’m not complaining,” his companion says. His accent hovers around Edinburgh. “It’s very smart. Cuts a very fine silhouette.”

The Captain has no idea what to say to that; the man’s suit is well made, and he’s wearing a rather fetching silk scarf loosely around his neck, but it doesn’t seem right to return the compliment, somehow. He wishes he’d thought to bring a drink outside with him.

“You’re a friend of Monty’s too, then?”

“I – yes, we were at Rugby together,” the Captain says. “He was good enough to invite me –”

“He was good enough to invite half the borough, by the sound of it.” That makes the Captain laugh, despite himself.

“And you?”

“Me what?”

“You and Monty –”

“Oh, I see. I’m just a hanger-on, really. We met fishing. Donkeys years ago, now. The great leveller, you know. Don’t move in the same circles, ordinarily.”

“I don’t think Monty much believes in circles,” the Captain says, and the man laughs, and it makes the Captain feel as though he’s won something, though he’d meant to sound disapproving.

“Name’s Parker, by the way. Good to meet you.”

They shake hands, Parker juggling the cocktail, and the Captain introduces himself, and cringes at his own kneejerk pomposity when he includes his rank. Parker whistles.

“Captain, eh? Well I never.” He reaches out and traces the stars on the Captain’s shoulder. It’s the lightest of touches; he can barely feel it through the serge. “Should have recognised these, I suppose – doesn’t bode well for my own military career.”

“Oh, are you –” He doesn’t seem it. There’s a looseness to his actions, a carelessness about him, his bare, pale throat and the swooping arc of his hair across his forehead, and the tangle of his long fingers around the stem of his glass. The army demands precision, clarity. Parker is - blurred, untidy, like a stone in a shoe.

“Well, sort of – I’m off to Spain next week,” Parker says, in the same tone one might employ to say _I’m off to Scarborough,_ as though it’s nothing. “Suppose I shall have to buck up my ideas, if I’m to make it out in one piece.”

“Spain? Gosh, really?”

Parker nods, and he looks serious for the first time.

“Are you – good heavens, you’re not a –”

The grin is back. Parker drains his glass and shrugs. “Don’t worry, I shan’t tell the Brigadier General you’ve been cavorting with Communists.”

“Now, steady on, old chap, I would hardly call this _cavorting –_ ”

There’s a ruckus from the street. Together, they peer over the balcony. Below, a rabble of Monty’s guests are piling into much too small a motor car, with much whistling and hollering.

“Robbie! Hurry up, you scamp!”

Parker snorts and cups his hands around his mouth. “Hold your horses, I’ll be there in a jiff,” he hollers back.

He straightens up. “Won’t you come with us? We’re going to Billie's.” As though that, too, is nothing, as though he’s forever inviting men he meets on balconies to establishments with racy names.

The Captain wants to say that his pass is only for forty-eight hours, and that he promised to look in on his mother before returning to base, and that wouldn't he prefer to stay here, in the dark, won't he stay, if only to hear the Captain's thoughts on battle readiness, on field dressings, on anything, really. 

Instead, he blurts out,

“Are you really a Communist?”

Parker pulls back from the balcony. “That’s not even the half of it,” he says obliquely; he’s shorter than the Captain by a good half a foot, and he’s looking up at him with his face mostly in shadow. “Won't you come?”

Monty sticks his head out onto the balcony, his red hair riotous and his face slick with sweat. “Rob, stir your stumps, they’re making a racket downstairs.”

Parker waves him away with a hand. “Tell them good things come to those who wait. Now, Captain, can I persuade you? You look as though you could do with some fun.”

The Captain’s been hearing variations on the same for most of his life. For most of his life, too, he’s found ways to politely decline. Fun is a dangerous concept, and not one of much use, in the military.

“I – I couldn’t possibly,” he stammers finally, thinking _he will die in Spain, he hasn’t the first clue about regimental discipline,_ and feeling his gut twist painfully at the thought.

Parker – Robbie – arches an eyebrow, and reaches across to touch his bicep; the Captain feels it this time, firm and bold through the thick wool. “Well, you know where I’ll be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more information about Billie's Club [here](https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/queer-club-culture-billies-club/). I've fudged the timeline a little here; the majority of British volunteers in the Spanish Civil War didn't arrive until 37 and 38, but I hope you'll forgive me.


	4. 1925

The fact is, he’s bored.

It’s a strange sensation when rapt attention is his default. He enjoys the lectures as much – more than – the drills, usually. The neat and thorough marshalling of information. War is hell, they say, but he is learning to master it. They work their way through DeGruyther, and Clausewitz, and Younghusband, and he knows – he _knows –_ that the wars he’ll wage with this growing catalogue of knowledge will be swift, will be proper.

He is aware the other fellows find him faintly ridiculous. They tease him every time they find him hunched over his books, scratching notes into the margin. They run off to the lido whooping, their towels around their sunburned necks, and he stays in the reading room until the light is gone and no more words will fit inside his head.

And yet – he’s bored.

Give him the finer points of reconnaissance. Give him the basics of demolition. Give him concealment, cartography, how to assign pickets, how to dig latrines – he drinks it in. But this – this hardly falls under tactics, or topography, or engineering. He spotted a fascinating article in the _Review_ over toast and marmalade that morning, and it’s a source of great irritation that he’s sitting here on a rickety folding chair, listening to the chaplain and the academy’s starchy matron blathering on about women of suspect morals and the overarching importance of sexual continence, when he could be immersing himself in the race between Enfield and Webley to perfect the .38 revolver.

To his left, Parry is sniggering into his sleeve. To his right, Taylor-Shawe is doodling something obscene in the margins of the pamphlet they’ve all been instructed to memorise. He forces himself to look back to the front of the room, where the matron is moving the lantern to the next slide, a wholly unappetising close-up of some painful-looking sores. 

Lining the walls, old heroes from Napoleonic days look down impassively from their portraits, watching young men smirk into their cuffs as the chaplain explains, clumsily, the proper application of permanganate solution.

It ends, finally, with a sobering promise of physical debility and quite possibly eternal damnation for any moral lapses, and they trail out of the lecture with a great scraping of chairs across the herringbone.

“Well, just listening to all that’s enough to make a man’s pecker shrivel up and fall off, and no mistake,” Parry says jauntily.

“I don’t see there’s anything to joke about. It’s a very serious matter – impact on a unit’s fighting fitness and all that, you know.”

Parry glances sideways at him. They get on well enough, most of the time, but he’s never quite understood how Parry can be so damn _glib_ about everything.

“Won’t be running into you down the neighbourhood _maison tolérée_ then, old boy?”

“You most certainly will _not,_ ” he splutters. “Good God, didn’t you listen to a word –”

“Oh, do lighten up. I’m just fed up to the back teeth of all this _degraded morals_ and _self-respecting gentlemen_ rigmarole. What I get up to’s my business –“

“Parry,” he says, with the same note of mild exasperation as ever, “You’re in the _army._ What you _get up to_ is subject to military –”

“Yes, yes, I know. I just mean – well, a man has urges, doesn’t he, and I don’t see that hectoring us about how we’re letting the side down and what would our mothers think and all that rot is going to do a blind bit of good.”

“I – I don’t – well, I see what you –”

“I don’t mean _you,_ old chum,” Parry says acidly. “We all know you’ve _far_ more important things to be doing than getting the clap from some tart in Basingstoke. I meant the rest of us mere mortals. With all our flesh and blood.”

“Now see here,” he says, a little wounded. _A man has urges, doesn’t he._ The memory of the phrase rankles. “That’s hardly fair –”

“It’s not, is it? I’m a brute, I know. All I’ll say is, when they hand out the prophylactic packets, perhaps you can slip me yours, if you’ve no need for it. I’m sure I can put it to good use.”

He grins again, then breaks into a jog, crossing the courtyard in a few easy strides, to where his friends are waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The pronoun chaos returneth. As too does the perennial question of the chronology of the Captain's military career. 
> 
> I couldn't find much scholarship on the British Army's approach to venereal disease between the wars, but [this](https://wellcomecollection.org/works/a2xavwd3) from 1907 was a wild read.


	5. 1940

Spring comes to Button House in a sudden riot of daffodils and warm showers. They fling the windows open and take drinks out onto the patio in the lengthening evenings, and carve the lawns up with croquet and bowls and cricket, and sometimes the war seems far away.

It’s a particularly rowdy game, that afternoon, and the Captain’s requisition reports are interminable, and dry, and his office stuffy, for all that he’s tried to get a breeze moving through the place. He’s been trying to concentrate on it for hours now. He enjoys paperwork, ordinarily – there is a safety to it, the neat putting away of untidiness in tidy boxes. But their whooping shows no sign of abating, and there are times even the Captain knows he’s beaten.

He leans on the window sill – the afternoon is balmy, and he’s removed his jacket, for once, as a concession to the approach of summer – and surveys the match. It’s an amateurish, lopsided display; they’re short a fielder or two, as ever, and he knows full well that Roscoe, who is an avowed association football man, will have been dragooned into the eleven against his will. Havers is at bat, however, and acquitting himself well, and worth watching. There’s an economy to his game – his strokes have a precision and deftness to them that is much admired at Button House.

Edwards lopes up to the crease and releases the ball with his customary spin. Havers dispatches it calmly for four, to much applause from his teammates, who are sprawled carelessly across the stone steps. The Captain watches approvingly. Havers does everything well, and without fanfare or artifice. It's what makes him such an excellent second in command. 

He must spend a half hour watching, leaning against the window, until finally Havers is bowled out just shy of his century. The opposition make a great fuss of Fortescue for the scalp, and direct some good-natured taunts towards Havers as he trudges back from the crease.

“Bad luck, Lieutenant,” the Captain calls from his open window. Havers looks up, surprised.

“Gracious, I didn’t know you were watching, sir.”

“Ah – yes. Yes, I was. You put up a very good fight, man.”

“Well, that’s us done for, though, isn’t it, more or less?” Sergeant Connors says, slinging an arm around Havers’ shoulder. “Don’t suppose you’ll come down and help us out, Captain? Havers says you’ve a mean sweep on you.”

“Oh yes, won’t you, sir?” Havers says, shading his eyes with a hand. “We’re in a bit of a pickle, we could do with those drives of yours.”

“I couldn’t – well, I really don’t –”

“Oh, go _on,_ sir,” little Paulie Martin pipes up.

The Captain looks down at them, gathered on the patio, their faces gleaming with exertion. His rank feels, not for the first time, like a millstone. The pile of requisition forms seems to flutter menacingly on his desk.

“Hmmm – very well, then,” he says sternly, only partly delighted when their faces break into smiles. “Just this once.”

He rolls up his shirt-sleeves as he descends to the patio.

“Now, I hope you haven’t been exaggerating my skills, Lieutenant,” he says brusquely, as Havers greets him at the door.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Havers says quietly, handing over his bat. “I’m terribly pleased you came down, sir. It doesn’t feel quite right, enjoying ourselves when you’re slaving away over those bits of paper.”

The Captain strides onto the lawn with a spring in his step, and takes his place at the wicket.

In the end, he’s caught out for a very decent sixty two, and he can’t stop himself from grinning broadly as he returns to their makeshift pavilion.

“Jolly good show, sir,” Havers says. He reaches out and claps him on the shoulder; the sort of gesture that simply wouldn’t work in the Captain’s office, between a CO and his second, but which seems permissible between teammates, in the soft in-between of late afternoon, with their hair a little askew and their forearms bare. “That ought to do the trick.”

“Bally shame I went down the middle there – knew the minute it left the bat it was all over.”

“Not at all, sir, you’ve saved our bacon. I say, won’t you come down to the village with us later? I’d say you’ve earned a pint, and no mistake.”

The millstone is back. And the old push and pull of his youth – caught between disdain and longing at the mere idea of merriment. In all the months he’s been stationed here, he’s never been to the Wheatsheaves. Though he can imagine it well enough. Packed three deep at the bar, the air thick with smoke and hops. Perching on rickety barstools, or else pressed against another fellow’s thigh, sweating through one’s uniform. The barmaids flirting, and the men lecherous and red-faced, and Havers saying something kind and conciliatory, something too quiet to catch below the hubbub, Havers lifting his ale to his lips, Havers, still with a smear of grass across his cheek.

“I’m afraid I’ve neglected my duties far too long, Lieutenant,” the Captain says briskly. “No, I regret, my evening’s for paperwork. I’ve had my fun for one day.”

Havers smiles. “I suppose we’ve distracted you long enough, sir. Perhaps another time?”

_Havers, halfway drunk, his arm around some flaxen village girl –_

The Captain clears his throat. “Yes. Perhaps. I do hope you enjoy yourself, Havers. Lord knows you’ve earned it.”

He turns on his heel, and heads back into the house.

It’s a relief, in truth. There were times, when war was brewing – and then, finally, upon them – when he wondered whether he was ready. Bizarre, really – to have trained for something so long, to have waited so, so long, for a chance at glory, and then, once the chance arrived, to find oneself gripped with fear. All those books and drills. All those fresh, young, untamed faces. What a man learns about himself, confronted with his own mortality. To see the elephant, and find oneself wanting. He worried –

But then, that was before he knew Havers. That was a different life, spun out of hypotheticals. Havers is at his side now, patient and careful, brimming with bravery. The sort of man nations are built from. Now he knows everything will be alright. He will not be found wanting. He will complete the mission. He will make Havers proud to follow him. He knows now – he would die for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can probably tell, I know nothing about cricket.


	6. +1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See, what happened was, it was super hard to imagine the Captain actually getting his brain sufficiently in gear to realise he hella gay. Thanks for your patience!

He’s a stickler for the rules, usually. If this is how he’s spending eternity, there will need to be regulations and protocols, to keep everything in order, to keep his mind from spooling out into nothing. He may be dead, but he is an officer and a gentleman, and there are standards to maintain.

This is one: keep a careful line between the living and the dead. It’s the hardest rule to learn. In the beginning, he follows the remnants of his unit, men and women he knew in life, around the house, willing them to see him. He tries screaming a few times. They don’t even flinch. Eventually they go. The tape disappears from the windows, and the groundsman spreads the sandbags on the lawns, burns their frayed skins on the same bonfire that sends the Captain’s careful records – all those hours of forms and maps and charts – up in smoke.

Once they go, it’s easier to steer clear of the humans that occasionally pass through the space. They exist mostly as passing curiosities, or mild irritations – soon enough, he learns not to envy them, because envy is futile, and counterproductive to the mission. Some stay long enough for him to learn their names; most do not. He watches Kitty and Thomas pine after them, decade after decade, each infatuation as predictable as the next, following them mournfully from room to room, lingering at the gates when they leave for the final time, and silently agrees with Robin when he grumbles that all things pass, and that attachment is pointless.

For want of anything better to do, he sometimes joins Fanny at the window and tuts along with her as the living tenants of Button House dig up the roses, or invite men with greasy, long hair back to the house, or let the mole infestation get out of control. It’s hard to care very much about any of it, though. It’s easier simply to stay clear, to drift politely out of their way, to keep to the quieter, colder parts of the house, the places less touched by life.

Pat comes. Julian comes. He watches them go through the same patterns. The rage and the loneliness spill out of them at first, and then it turns inwards, festers, and then finally subsides into a contented sort of melancholy. A pain that’s too sharp ever to be entirely forgotten, but dull enough to live with. If living is the right word.

He tries to help them, to show them the ropes. Awake at six, start the day off with a brisk round of calisthenics, open up those lungs, can’t let standards slip, that’s not the sort of attitude that sent Fritz scuttling back to Berlin with his tail between his legs.

Pat grins and tells him there’s this thing called _aerobics_ now, and he should have seen him back in the day, he could really pull off the turquoise leg warmers.

Julian invites him to do something unspeakable to his mother.

He tells them to avoid the living, that it doesn’t help at all, no use making ourselves miserable about something we can’t change, stiff upper lip and all that, eh?

Pat says, _but what if Carol_ –

Julian repeats his earlier suggestion.

Time, too much of it, and thoughts to fill it. He keeps his distance from the living, more or less. Self-preservation, or something of that ilk, he tells himself. Rules are rules, even if they’re rules he’s set himself, for himself alone.

Heather Button dwindles over years, and the house dwindles too. A thin dust settles on furniture half a century out of date. Moths make lace of the curtains, the sun bleaches the upholstery. Ivy erupts from the chimney stacks and pushes roof slates out of place. Water seeps in, freezes, stains, warps, rots. Heather Button retreats first from the east wing, then from every room save her own, her last, the one in which she will die.

The Captain, passing in and out of rooms, never getting too close, watches young women with their hair pulled back in neat, practical buns, in clean lilac tabards, visit her daily, prop pillows behind her, wipe her mouth, listen patiently to her scant conversation. They are professionals, he thinks approvingly, watching them pretend not to see the peeling wallpaper, the cracked window panes, mirrors speckled with mould, the doorknobs cruddy with rust. They leave in what he supposes must be cars – compact, brightly coloured, quieter than any machine he remembers – and sometimes he goes along to Pat’s What Are The Nurses Doing This Evening Club, for something to do.

Alison and Mike turn everything upside down.

There’s something magnetic about them. Maybe it’s the laughter. It rolls through the house in waves, catching in the hidden corners, the nooks and crannies that haven’t seen life or light for decades. They are always laughing.

The ghosts follow them from room to room, spellbound, horrified, fascinated – sometimes all at once, and the Captain follows too, the rules temporarily forgotten. All in the name of reconnaissance. Very important to get the lay of the land. They won’t stay long. It won’t hurt to size up the enemy.

The first night they sleep in the house – once they have stopped marvelling at how they own this, every brick of it, every shred of its history, and started panicking about the leaks, the cracks, the _bills –_ the Captain breaks his own rules.

His eyes adjust slowly to the gloom; there’s a blueish light from each bedside table – their portable telephones, glowing, dormant. Listening, maybe. It’s cold – the boiler is tomorrow’s challenge – and they’ve pulled the blankets up to their noses, so that their bodies, huddled close, make a lumpen, misshapen hillock in the middle of the bed.

The Captain peers at them, feeling only a mild stab of guilt and unease at his espionage. They are wrapped around each other as though welded. Fanny would call it obscene, say that it was hardly respectable for a married couple to share a bedchamber. The Captain shudders to think what Julian would say.

In truth, it’s nothing like obscene. It’s – intimate. There’s not a shred of artifice or shame about it. He can almost feel the heat their bodies make, clutched tightly, their faces slack and peaceful.

Alison turns in her sleep, buries her face in Mike’s shoulder. Mike, without waking, pulls her closer. The Captain holds his breath, or as good as. It’s mesmerising – their bodies moving together so smoothly, without words, without consciousness, even. It’s not muscle memory – the Captain knows all about that, knows how to disassemble and reassemble a rifle in record time – it’s more like muscle dialogue, the heart talking to the heart.

What must that feel like. The Captain’s life was punctuated with brusque, deliberate contact – handshakes and clapped shoulders, too much time elapsing between each one _–_ and not with casual, thoughtless, _unconscious_ touching, between bodies that knew each other so well that they no longer contained secrets.

This – this is why he stays away from the living. Sometimes – between the arguments and the suffering and the long, hard, thankless striving – they remind him of what a life, at its best, can contain, and of all the things his own life did not. Alison looks small, and fragile, and safe, her hair messy across her face, Mike’s arm around her.

The Captain stands sentry in the shadows, and knows he would give anything to lie like that with someone. So deeply asleep as to be almost dead. Strong arms around him, his face buried in a broad chest as it rises and falls. Oblivious to the world, and to shame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's read and commented. It means a lot, a lot.


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